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Demography is everywhere in our lives: from birth to death. Indeed, the universal currencies of survival, development, reproduction, and recruitment shape the performance of all species, from microbes to humans. The number of techniques for demographic data acquisition and analyses across the entire tree of life (microbes, fungi, plants, and animals) has drastically increased in recent decades. These developments have been partially facilitated by the advent of technologies such as GIS and drones, as well as analytical methods including Bayesian statistics and high-throughput molecular analyses. However, despite the universality of demography and the significant research potential that could...
Top researchers in the field introduce interdisciplinary perspectives on senescence, presenting new insights and cutting-edge research.
The existing theories on the evolution of senescence assume that senescence is inevitable in all organisms. However, recent studies have shown that this is not necessarily true. A better understanding of senescence and its underlying mechanisms could have far-reaching consequences for conservation and eco-evolutionary research. This book is the first to offer interdisciplinary perspectives on the evolution of senescence in many species, setting the stage for further developments. It brings together new insights from a wide range of scientific fields and cutting-edge research done on a multitude of different animals (including humans), plants and microbes, giving the reader a complete overview of recent developments and of the controversies currently surrounding the topic. Written by specialists from a variety of disciplines, this book is a valuable source of information for students and researchers interested in ageing and life history traits and populations.
Presenting multidisciplinary and global insights, this book explores the nexus between economies, institutions, and territories and how global phenomena have local consequences. It examines how original and innovative economic related processes embed themselves in societies at the local level; how boundaries between the state and the market are placed under stress by unexpected changes. It explores whether new types of elites and forms of social inequalities are emerging as a result of institutional and economic changes, and whether peripheral areas are experiencing insidious forms of economic and institutional lock-in. Presenting empirical cases and useful analytical and conceptual tools, the book makes current economic and territorial phenomena more understandable. This is an important read for students and scholars in the fields of geography, sociology, political sciences, anthropology, economics, regional science, and international relations. It is also a valuable resource for policymakers, well-educated lay readers and economic, political and international relations journalists.
An essential, up-to-date look at the critical interactions between biological diversity and climate change that will serve as an immediate call to action The physical and biological impacts of climate change are dramatic and broad-ranging. People who care about the planet and manage natural resources urgently need a synthesis of our rapidly growing understanding of these issues. In this all-new sequel to the 2005 volume Climate Change and Biodiversity, leading experts in the field summarize observed changes, assess what the future holds, and offer suggested responses. Edited by distinguished conservationist Thomas E. Lovejoy and climate change biologist Lee Hannah, this comprehensive volume includes the latest research and explores emerging topics. From extinction risk to ocean acidification, the future of the Amazon to changes in ecosystem services, and geoengineering to the power of ecosystem restoration, this volume captures the sweep of climate change transformation of the biosphere. An authoritative, up-to-date reference, this is the new benchmark synthesis for climate change scientists, conservationists, managers, policymakers, and educators.
This book is a “How To” guide for modeling population dynamics using Integral Projection Models (IPM) starting from observational data. It is written by a leading research team in this area and includes code in the R language (in the text and online) to carry out all computations. The intended audience are ecologists, evolutionary biologists, and mathematical biologists interested in developing data-driven models for animal and plant populations. IPMs may seem hard as they involve integrals. The aim of this book is to demystify IPMs, so they become the model of choice for populations structured by size or other continuously varying traits. The book uses real examples of increasing comple...
How do plants make a living? Some plants are gamblers, others are swindlers. Some plants are habitual spenders while others are strugglers and miserly savers. Plants have evolved a spectacular array of solutions to the existential problems of survival and reproduction in a world where resources are scarce, disturbances can be deadly, and competition is cut-throat. Few topics have both captured the imagination and furrowed the brows of plant ecologists, yet no topic is more important for understanding the assembly of plant communities, predicting plant responses to global change, and enhancing the restoration of our rapidly degrading biosphere. The vast array of plant strategy models that cha...
Human evolutionary demography is an emerging field blending natural science with social science. This edited volume provides a much-needed, interdisciplinary introduction to the field and highlights cutting-edge research for interested readers and researchers in demography, the evolutionary behavioural sciences, biology, and related disciplines. By bridging the boundaries between social and biological sciences, the volume stresses the importance of a unified understanding of both in order to grasp past and current demographic patterns. Demographic traits, and traits related to demographic outcomes, including fertility and mortality rates, marriage, parental care, menopause, and cooperative b...
A masterful hybrid of nature writing and cultural studies that investigates our connection with deer—from mythology to biology, from forests to cities, from coexistence to control and extermination—and invites readers to contemplate the paradoxes of how humans interact with and shape the natural world Deer have been an important part of the world that humans occupy for millennia. They’re one of the only large animals that can thrive in our presence. In the 21st century, our relationship is full of contradictions: We hunt and protect them, we cull them from suburbs while making them an icon of wilderness, we see them both as victims and as pests. But there is no doubt that we have a con...
This open access book shows how to use sensitivity analysis in demography. It presents new methods for individuals, cohorts, and populations, with applications to humans, other animals, and plants. The analyses are based on matrix formulations of age-classified, stage-classified, and multistate population models. Methods are presented for linear and nonlinear, deterministic and stochastic, and time-invariant and time-varying cases. Readers will discover results on the sensitivity of statistics of longevity, life disparity, occupancy times, the net reproductive rate, and statistics of Markov chain models in demography. They will also see applications of sensitivity analysis to population grow...